CCC Silobela parly aspirant says infant learners must be taught in their mother tongue

By Staff Reporter
The Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) parliamentary aspirant for Silobela Ephraim Ndlovu has said education is his top priority towards the development of the constituency which for long has suffered from neglect.
A Silobela native and lawyer by profession, Ndlovu said human capital development ranks top of his priority list before adding, education will be meaningful if learners are taught in their mother tongue starting at infant levels.
“One key priority area in my campaign is on education. After being born and bred in Silobela and educated in schools in Silobela, education is at the top of my priority. We cannot speak of the development of Silobela without developing our human capital. Poor pass rates in our school here in Silobela is a serious cause for concern,” he said.
Ndlovu said the poor pass rate is mainly caused by having learners at an elementary stage being taught by people who are not conversant with local languages such as Ndebele.
“As you can appreciate, Silobela has a huge Ndebele population, but we are having a situation whereby, we are having people who are not conversant in Ndebele being deployed to teach infants while they don’t know the language. We are going to push and ensure that we have teachers who are conversant in local languages being deployed to our area to teach these infants” he said.
Ndlovu said knowledge of local languages contributes massively towards the development of Silobela.
“The dominant view is that infant education is better achieved when the teacher understands the child’s mother language, this view is supported as well by literature in child learning psychology, it is further still a government policy on implementation. The view of our people in Silobela is that our children who want to be deployed in our communities must be given priority. There is a petition of our chiefs in that regard.
“The idea is that whenever possible. Those who teach our children in Gobo and Ruya must understand our Shona language for effective teacher pupil communication. This goes for Tonga, Ndebele, English and any other language,” he said.
In addition, Ndlovu added his campaign is premised on inclusivity and diversity which Silobela has to offer.
“My campaign is premised on inclusivity, everyone in Silobela must feel part of our constituency and work together in developing our constituency. In Silobela we have Ndebele, Shona, English and Nyanja as part of our languages make up. Through my campaign I am promoting all those languages. We have Nyanja which is dominant in Tiger Reef. Tiger Reef is dominated by former migrant workers. We can only develop as a constituency if we take pride in our languages as they are part of our identity,” he said.